Europe

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of Inglorious Empire written and read by Shashi Tharoor....

Winner of the National Book Award for Nonfiction in 1961, this worldwide bestselling classic chronicles the most infamous era of our times.

The Mongol army led by Genghis Khan subjugated more lands and people in 25 years than the Romans did in 400....

Random House presents the audiobook edition of Postwar by Tony Judt, read by Ralph Cosham....

When Thomas Roe arrived in India in 1616 as James I’s first ambassador to the Mughal Empire, the English barely had a toehold in the subcontinent. Their understanding of South Asian trade and India was sketchy at best, and, to the Mughals, they were minor players on a very large stage...

Kim Philby was the most notorious British defector and Soviet mole in history. Agent, double agent, traitor and enigma, he betrayed every secret of Allied operations to the Russians in the early years of the Cold War.

Using a range of forgotten Afghan and Indian sources, William Dalrymple's masterful retelling of Britain's greatest imperial disaster is a powerful parable of colonial ambition and cultural collision, folly and hubris. Return of a King is history at its most urgent and important....

On 24 February 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine in an escalation of the Russo-Ukraine conflict that began eight years earlier. But Russia’s recent rise on the world’s stage began long before that historic date.

Ibn Fadlan and the Land of Darkness provides a rare and valuable glimpse of Viking customs, dress, table manners, religion, and sexual practices, including the only eyewitness account ever written of a Viking ship cremation.

Challenging conventional wisdom about where power is held on a global scale, Stern complicates the supposedly firm distinction between private enterprise and the state, offering a new history of the British Empire, as well as a new history of the corporation....

Bill Bryson was struck one day by the thought that we devote a lot more time to studying the battles and wars of history than to considering what history really consists of....

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of Thomas Cromwell by Diarmid MacCulloch, read by David Rintoul....

In this love letter to the world’s favourite country, you’ll find everything youknow and love about Italy: the classic food, the dreamy landscapes, the Renaissance masterpieces.

This broad and panoramic series, ripe with the telling detail on which history can turn, will help you pull an enormous sweep of history together into one coherent framework....

The story of philosophy is an epic tale: an exploration of the ideas, views and teachings of some of the most creative minds known to humanity....

In this magnificent synthesis of military, technological, and social history, William H. McNeill explores a whole millennium of human upheaval and traces the path....

Many of us know little about Archimedes other than his "Eureka" exclamation upon discovering that he could immerse an object in a full tub of water and determine the object's weight.....

A lively and engaging narrative history showing the common threads in the cultures that gave birth to our own....

'If Hitler fails to invade or destroy Britain, he has lost the war,' Churchill said in the summer of 1940. He was right. The Battle of Britain was a crucial turning point in the history of the Second World War....

This seventh volume of Will and Ariel Durant's renowned Story of Civilization chronicles the history of European civilization from 1558 to 1648....

Iron and Blood is a startlingly ambitious and absorbing book. It encompasses five centuries of political, military, technological and economic change to tell the story of the German-speaking lands, from the Rhine to the Balkan frontier, from Switzerland to the North Sea....

The Holy Roman Empire lasted 1,000 years, far longer than ancient Rome. Yet this formidable dominion never inspired the awe of its predecessor....

At eighteen, your life is full of of what-ifs and why-nots. You have everything to look forward to – unless you’ve got the plague....

The compelling story of Germany’s decline – where it all went wrong and how it could bounce back.

Long sources of mystery, imagination, and inspiration, the myths and history of the ancient Mediterranean have given rise to artistic, religious, cultural, and intellectual traditions....

In Plato and the Tyrant, acclaimed historian and classicist James Romm draws on personal letters of Plato to show how a philosopher helped topple the leading Greek power of the era: the opulent city of Syracuse. There, Plato encountered two authoritarian rulers, a father and son both named Dionysius, and tried to steer them toward philosophy. At the same time, he worked on his masterpiece, Republic, in which he conceived a ruler who unites perfect wisdom with absolute power.

1742: the famous dome atop Saint Peter's Basilica, designed by Michelangelo, is fractured and threatened with collapse. The dome is the pride of Italy and the largest of its kind anywhere in the world. And no one knows how to fix it. This engaging and colorful narrative tells the overlooked story of how Michelangelo's Dome was saved from disaster by three mathematicians and Pope Benedict XIV, who had asked them for help.

When Pauline Terreehorst bid for a vintage Gucci suitcase at Sotheby's Amsterdam, she had no idea what was inside. The case turned out to be full of fine dresses, furs, and lace, with boxes of postcard albums showing grand castles and churches in Austria, France, England, and Scotland. The curious correspondence revolved around Austrian philanthropist Countess Margarethe Szapary, and her daughter.

Through its unforgettable characters and immersive storytelling, The Intermediaries charts the relationships between nascent sexual science, queer civil rights, and the fight against fascism. It tells riveting stories of LGBTQ pioneers and offers a cautionary tale in the face of today's oppressive anti-trans legislation.

In May 1972, Liese Greensfelder arrived in the small Norwegian town of Øystese to startling news: Johannes, the farmer who hired her for the summer, had just been hospitalized after a stroke. Could she please watch over his place for a month or so, until he got back on his feet? Twenty years old and with no farming experience, Liese was dropped off the next day at a centuries-old mountain farm at the end of a dirt road high above the magnificent Hardanger Fjord—with 115 sheep, two cows, one calf, a draft horse, and a Norwegian herding dog to care for.

Aachen saw some of the fiercest fighting of the Second World War. Through the determined defense of their city the citizens of Aachen held off the oncoming American forces for six weeks, giving the Nazis time to mobilize their troops for what would become the Battle of the Bulge. Had it not been for dogged resistance of these men and women the last great German offensive in the West might have never occurred, potentially ending the war in Europe six months earlier and saving the lives of thousands.

Who really built Europe's finest Romanesque monuments? Clergymen presiding over holy sites are credited throughout history, while highly skilled creators remain anonymous. But the buildings speak for themselves.

After the WWII, Germans began a generation-long debate about the status that should be accorded Wehrmacht deserters. The topic would be debated between the two Germanies and engaged survivors and perpetrators, playwrights, and judges, those who had stayed in the ranks and those who had not. Was the Wehrmacht a coward, a victim, or a role model? The book's discussion of this postwar debate explains how and why Germany finally decided to overturn military court-martial verdicts from the Second World War fifty years after its conclusion.

In The First Fleets, Benjamin C. Schaffer reveals how, contrary to widespread beliefs, the American colonies had a long tradition of independent naval defense decades before the Revolution. He demonstrates that Anglo-American governments established and maintained significant provincial naval forces and that the history of provincial navies illuminates broader aspects of colonial history and the colonies' ultimate break with the British Crown. Based on meticulous research, Schaffer recounts the sea-borne threats that American colonies faced from the French, Spanish, pirates, and others.

The roots of today's environmental catastrophe run deep into humanity's past. Through this unprecedented reading of Homer's Iliad, the award-winning classicist Edith Hall examines how this foundational text both documents the environmental practices of the ancient Greeks and betrays an awareness of the dangers posed by the destruction of the natural landscape. Underlying Homer's account of brutal military operations, alliances, and cataclysmic struggle is a palpable understanding that the direction in which humanity was headed could create a world that was uninhabitable.